Strive for seamless digital payments, lessons to be learnt from NSE’s tech glitch: FM

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday asked civil accounts officers to have a clear roadmap for seamless digital payments, saying there are lessons to be learnt from the “technology-driven glitch” that happened at National Stock Exchange.

Addressing the 45th Civil Accounts Day she said the Controller General of Accounts (CGA), who is the bookkeeper of government accounts, has adopted great systemic reforms.

Sitharaman said that to keep government accounts transparent, the CGA will have to adapt and keep pace with changing technology to keep government account transparent.

“Seamlessness of payments is more important,… I will bring it here as an example to say even where complete foolproof systems are laid, you find in NSE a couple of days ago when there was a glitch, a kind of technology-driven glitch, which nobody could have anticipated, but that glitch has caused us immensely and lessons are being learnt.

“Maybe that was an issue of interoperability between the two exchanges, but that is the kind of thing where seamless digital payment is the goal that we have to aspire for. That was also an example that tells us about how seamless payment modes or technology-driven platforms can face. So, taking lessons from that, I would think seamless digital payments is something you have to clearly have a roadmap for,” Sitharaman said.

The NSE had on Wednesday halted trading on the stock exchange for nearly four hours due to a technical glitch.

The minister suggested that the CGA should move towards being more paperless and user friendly in its functioning and also aim for greater integration with the Department of Expenditure and states.